


you tilt your head, there's a city inside

by luninosity



Category: Actor RPF, Captain America (Movies) RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Laundry, Love Confessions, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Panties, Pining Seb, Protective Chris, Sexual Content, Sharing Clothes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-06 14:44:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6758266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sebastian considers his spaghetti bolognese. “You’re no help at all,” he says to it, “I mean, I like you, but this isn’t working.” The pasta drips sauce back onto itself, red flecks from the bite on his fork, in reply.</p><p>“Okay,” he agrees, “not your fault,” and eats the bite. He’s careful to not get any sauce on Chris’s couch. He's a guest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you tilt your head, there's a city inside

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ViperSeven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViperSeven/gifts).



> Title this time from Ludo's "Manta Rays," which has ALMOST been a fic title so many times. I feel like Seb would appreciate the sci-fi weirdness of it.
> 
> This was the first draft of what turned into the clothes-sharing fic; this one ended up being way more pining Seb and Seb in panties and protective Chris, so it had to be its own thing.
> 
> Seb's red boxer-briefs are real-life canon, as glimpsed by fans on at least two occasions (not anything sexual! seen while he was stretching or getting onto an airplane and reaching up to put a suitcase away!). The rest is me extrapolating and having fun. :-)

Sebastian considers his spaghetti bolognese. “You’re no help at all,” he says to it, “I mean, I like you, but this isn’t working.” The pasta drips sauce back onto itself, red flecks from the bite on his fork, in reply.  
  
“Okay,” he agrees, “not your fault,” and eats the bite. He’s careful to not get any sauce on Chris’s couch. It _is_ Chris’s couch, and Sebastian is here on said couch because he’s staying at Chris’s Los Angeles house, because that’d made sense for the beginning of the publicity rodeo and Chris Evans is a good friend with a big heart and open doors.  
  
Sebastian’s own heart is very stupid. It wants more. Not content with Chris inviting him in, giving him huge engulfing hugs, sharing a jacket, being a friend.  
  
No, he tells himself and the spaghetti. No. You are content. You have him in your life, that’s enough, that’s lucky, that’s more than you could ever deserve.  
  
He eats more pasta. He gets on Instagram and pokes around and answers a few fan messages. He has fans; he still finds this fact astounding. He’s got the best and most creative and nicest fans ever; he adores every one of them.  
  
He’s alone in Chris’s Los Angeles house because Chris is off being filmed for the MTV Movie Awards. Marvel’s being represented by Captain America and the Falcon tonight; both Chris and Anthony had offered to let him be their plus-one. He’d declined.  
  
He’d needed to make a phone call. That hadn’t been a lie. He’d checked in with his mother, talked about his stepfather’s steadily deteriorating condition, hung up and closed his eyes very tightly, standing with phone in hand in the center of Chris’s kitchen.  
  
He’s also very tired. Back to back films. Publicity rounds. More filming. Hair dye. Hair dye back to brown. And Chris here all the time, constantly here and touchable, laughing and joking and stopping during their morning run to pet a dog—Chris everywhere in this house and at press conferences and popping in to ask if Sebastian needs anything before bed, and—  
  
He loves Chris Evans. He has for years.  
  
He knows Chris sees him as a friend. A nice guy. A sweet kid. The memory of those last words, said with a grin, hurts, albeit in a private radiant way. He’ll take the hurt and keep it safe alongside the sensation of Chris’s hand ruffling his hair. Bits of a story he can unfold and revisit from time to time, when the sky’s grey and rueful and bittersweet.  
  
He puts the leftover spaghetti bolognese into tidy Tupperware, labels it neatly with a piece of tape— _for you!_ —and tosses the container into the fridge. Chris will be hungry upon arriving home, hungry and tipsy from the aftermath of public-speech associated stress and consequent beer, and Chris likes Italian food.  
  
During the interviews earlier that day Chris had noticed he’d been cold. Had taken off his own jacket, bright blue like wistful summer skies, and plopped it on Sebastian’s shoulders. With another intoxicating grin.  
  
The jacket had smelled like Chris. Soap and Old Spice and male heat. Sebastian’s always had a weakness for traditional masculine scents and strength.  
  
He assumes Chris knows he’s bisexual; the subject’s never directly come up, but during the first Captain America film one of his exes—coincidentally also named Chris—had called to ask for help choosing a next project. Sebastian and his current Chris—oh, no, not _his_ Chris; as if, as if ever— had been grabbing food together during a fleeting break; Sebastian had said hastily, “Oh, sorry, my ex, he just wanted to ask—” and then stopped, cheeks hot.  
  
Chris had said, “Your exes call you at lunch? Come on, man, food’s important!” and put half a chicken sandwich into his mouth at once. Sebastian, fascinated by this display of oral capacity, had forgotten to reply.  
  
And now he’s here. In Chris’s house. Alone. A trusted friend.  
  
Chris’s house is sprawling and laid-back and personable, an extension of its owner. One wall is blue because Chris likes blue and accent walls had been in style at the time. Wide windows display a cinematic vision of the valley, Hollywood and rolling hills and even Marvel Studios if one knows precisely where to look and squints hard. Meditations on philosophy and ethics sit side by side with books on wilderness survival and outer space; a piano and a guitar commune happily in one corner of the living room, and Sebastian knows for a fact there’s a beer-pong table folded up in that hall closet. Chris has a large television for watching games when he’s here; Chris uses the kitchen mostly for storing food because Chris can’t cook, at least not by any edible definition. Sebastian’s been making eggs and decent sandwiches and pasta for them both for the last three days.  
  
He likes cooking for Chris. Feels domestic. Easy. Good.  
  
That morning Chris had said, laughing, _you don’t have to earn your keep or anything, stop that, you’re my guest, you don’t have to cook for me!_  
  
More hurt, under his own smile. Blossoming like a rose: splendid and thorny. The thorns took away another small piece of his heart, as Chris suggested he not do something he’s good at, useful for, silently offering up in place of the words he can’t say.  
  
He’d made some joke about Chris obviously starving and withering away without him, and then made blueberry pancakes as a pointed retort. Chris had given him a rather wounded gaze and insisted on doing the dishes.  
  
He washes tonight’s spaghetti-related pots and puts them away. Outside dark’s spread cool wings over the world. No stars visible; lots of other lights twinkle instead. Southern California on a springtime evening. It’d been an overcast fuzzy kind of day. They’d been inside for most of it.  
  
He curls up on Chris’s couch. He’s wearing Black Widow pajama pants and a battered old Rutgers sweatshirt with sleeves that keep wearily sliding down; he’d wanted to be comfortable, and Chris has already seen him in gym shorts and at wardrobe fittings and once briefly stuck in the Winter Soldier arm on a hot day. Besides, Chris owns the Thor pajama pants, so.  
  
He pushes up his sleeves again. He wiggles toes inside blue-striped socks. He likes fun socks. Chris likes fun socks too; once they'd discovered this fact they’d delightedly started buying each other random pairs. Sebastian’s currently winning with the official NASA-logo pair he’d given to Chris, but Chris has no clue about the way Sebastian’s heart gets caught in his mouth, butterflies tangling his tongue, every time he gets to see Chris Evans smile. This probably means Chris is in fact winning in some obscure way.  
  
Sebastian also likes fun underwear—he’s got a scarlet hip-hugging pair on right now—but he’s certain that revelation of this fact would not spark gift-giving. More likely throwing-out-of-house. With his laundry.  
  
Well, possibly not. Chris is too nice to kick him out and fling panties at his head. A more probable scenario involves shocked silence and the end of any burgeoning closeness, courtesy of images Chris doesn’t want to have to imagine.  
  
He sighs. Pushes up a sleeve. _Again_.  
  
Chris will be back late, he knows.  
  
He flips on the television.   
  
He ends up watching the Food Network for a while, idly wondering whether he could ever make a lemon-blueberry cream-cheese tart with _that_ many lacy delicate layers.  
  
He’s been in love with Chris for so long that it’s simply a fact of his existence by now. Chris Evans is the bravest and kindest and goofiest person he knows. Chris Evans speaks openly about his anxiety and therapy and laughs at himself and knows every line of _The Little Mermaid_ and buys Sebastian’s ridiculous flavor-drenched coffee creamer even though he doesn’t use it himself. Chris uses his celebrity to support charities and to make children smile. Chris Evans is _good_ in the deepest truest sense of the word.  
  
He’s fortunate to be at Chris’s side. Learning from him. Soaking up that laugh; adoring the moments when the laugh’s miraculously because of him.  
  
He almost certainly can’t make a lemon-blueberry cream-cheese tart with the meager contents of Chris’s cabinets. He sighs.  
  
He gets back on Instagram and likes some Bucky Barnes fan art.  
  
He wonders whether he can make beer bread with the contents of Chris’s kitchen. He’s been buying a few ingredients, the last couple days.   
  
He can. It’s not bad. Especially warm and dripping with butter.  
  
He wraps up the other half for Chris.  
  
He flops dramatically across the couch, lets out an undignified groan because landing on a stomach full of buttered bread is not a good idea, and rolls over. He’s not used to possessing bigger muscles yet; he’s planning to slim back down, he’s never wanted to add bulk, but he’d needed the body mass. Bucky needs to be visibly powerful and dangerous; Sebastian has learned from the previous film’s heavy metal arm just how important muscle can be when swinging that kind of weight for days on end.  
  
He rewatches one of Chris’s old interviews, one in which Chris talks about liking to be in control. He blushes. He does not do anything about the throb between his legs, the pleasant familiar swell of desire, because he is _a guest in Chris’s house_ and he has some self-control, dammit.  
  
He never was good at being patient.  
  
He shuts the laptop and buries his face in the sofa and makes pathetic frustrated noises, which solves nothing, but a couch-pillow falls onto his back in some attempt at comforting, so that’s nice.  
  
More press tomorrow. More time spent with Chris, standing close, being cuddled or given a jacket if cold, while all the while he wants to scream and press his lips to Chris’s tempting ones.  
  
He loves Chris’s beard. He imagines it scratching his stomach, his thighs.  
  
He whimpers out loud.   
  
He goes back to the Food Network, in despair.  
  
At some point during a cupcake competition he falls asleep, the low-key tension of the day and the squishy sofa joining forces to induce a nap. He jerks awake for no good reason and nearly smacks himself in the face with his own left hand, and consequently nearly falls off the sofa.  
  
Two in the morning. No Chris yet. He checks his phone, well aware that he’s acting as if he has some sort of claim on Chris’s time. No messages.  
  
He does worry, though. Chris gets flushed and flustered and anxious under the weight of expectations. Chris copes via drunken riotous mindless afterparties sometimes, and coming home and collapsing sometimes. Chris, like Sebastian himself, has a live press event tomorrow. Together.  
  
He wants to text. He doesn’t.  
  
Six minutes past two. Seven.  
  
Maybe he should.  
  
He puts a finger on the screen, hesitating.  
  
The front door opens. He whips around that way, and does fall off the couch this time. His hip collides with the coffee-table. Pain happens.   
  
Chris nudges the door slowly at first, tentatively, as if trying not to startle a potentially sleeping houseguest. But when hip-versus-coffee-table noise thumps through the night—  
  
“Seb! Jesus, fuck, are you okay?”  
  
“I’m fine, sorry—just clumsy—no, really fine—”  
  
“Sit still. I’m so fucking sorry, did I scare you, are you all right?”  
  
“No…I mean yes…um, sorry…” He stops. Futile. He can’t think. He’s sitting on Chris’s floor next to the coffee-table, which doesn’t seem guilty about this. He’s got Chris’s big hands running over his body, checking him over. He’s surrounded by Chris’s concern.  
  
“Shit.” Chris sits back, but then reaches out, tips his chin up. Any chance at rational thought flies away. “I’m sorry. I thought you’d be asleep, I was trying not to wake you up, but—you feel okay? Head, arm, anything hurting?”  
  
Bewildered amid the onslaught of protectiveness, Sebastian looks at his own right wrist. He’d tried to break his fall.   
  
Chris’s mouth tightens. “Can I see? You can move it, yeah? Here, tell me when this hurts.”  
  
He gasps, but not until a bit after Chris seems to think he should. Sudden icy flares skitter along his arm. Not bad, though; he’s strained body parts before. This is just the impact and his own weight. It’ll heal fast.  
  
“There?” Observant eyes’ve caught his reaction. “Okay. That shouldn’t be too bad, but I should wrap it for you, and don’t use it if—”  
  
“Chris,” Sebastian whispers.  
  
“Yeah?” Chris’s hand comes back to touch his face, to cup his cheek. Seemingly unconscious: as if Chris can’t not touch him just then. “Where else does it hurt? Talk to me.”  
  
“My hip, but…I’m okay. I wasn’t asleep.”  
  
“You weren’t? Here…” Chris tugs him upright, eases him down on the couch. Next to all that affectionate glowing care. “Can I see?”  
  
“…what? Oh…yes, sure—no, fuck, wait—” Red hip-hugging underthings. Fuck. “It’s all right.”  
  
Chris pauses. Takes hands away. “Yeah, okay. Sorry, overreacting, I just get a little—I don’t know. Intense. Shit.”  
  
“No,” Sebastian says, sitting up and grabbing forlorn Captain America hands. “No. I like it.” He knows about Chris’s anxiety. He knows about Chris’s tattoos. He knows about the one that memorializes a lost friend. He does know. “It’s honestly fine. Just a bruise. You know how I like to get intimate with furniture. Tables. Refrigerators. Walls.”  
  
“Walls aren’t furniture,” Chris grumbles, half-automatic teasing. “Seb…ah, fuck. Never mind. Can I at least wrap up that wrist?”  
  
“It shouldn’t even need that—yes, of course, go on.” He adds, as Chris’s distress eases with a task to perform, “I made beer bread. And spaghetti.”  
  
“You made what with my beer?” Chris sprints into the kitchen and back, first-aid kit in hand. “At least for tonight, then. Tell me if this is too tight.”  
  
“Fuck ow fuck yes—”  
  
“Sorry!”  
  
“No, it’s better.” Chris has loosened the wrapping a bit, and the support does feel helpful. “You…this evening…how’d it go?” You’re here and not drunk. You’re here and not shivering in the aftermath. You’re taking care of me. I’m confused.  
  
“Kind of a mess, teleprompter got screwed up, I fucked up a line. Gonna be on the internet forever.” Chris should sound distressed about this, but seems to be purely focused on Sebastian’s arm. “How’s that?”  
  
He tests motion. “Good. Are you…all right?”  
  
“I was seriously considering drinking myself to sleep,” Chris mutters, “but then you fell off a couch. Want ice?”  
  
“No. It’s okay, I swear.” He reaches over. Tugs at broad shoulders with the uninjured hand. “Come here.”  
  
“You don’t have to—”  
  
Sebastian pushes. Chris flops down on the couch, head in Sebastian’s lap. He employs his good hand kneading tension away from those shoulders. It’s not weird; they’ve done this for each other countless times. On set. After rough workouts. They touch a lot.  
  
He stifles a sigh. Pushes harder.  
  
Chris groans as a knot eases. Protests, “You really shouldn’t—”  
  
“You took care of me,” Sebastian informs him. “My turn.” Let me do this. Let me have this. Let me care for you. Please.  
  
Chris makes him feel safe and happy and tingly inside. Chris makes him feel like he can be himself, crack filthy jokes, get excited over kitten-shaped magnets and hot-dog food trucks, chase dreams about short stories and publication. Chris gets excited right along with him.  
  
Sebastian would die for Chris. Sebastian will care for Chris with every ferocious scrap of love he’s got, and break his own heart a thousand times over to spare those compassionate eyes a single drop of pain.  
  
Chris’s breathing slows; his head’s heavy. Sebastian wonders whether he’s falling asleep. Rubs his back through the layers of suit and jacket, which Chris hadn’t removed in the rush to his side. The television chatters softly about buttercream and orange zest. His hip hurts in a mild distant way; he doesn’t mind that. He’s not about to move.  
  
Chris yawns. “Seb?” His voice comes out sleepy. Plaintive and surprisingly defenseless. “Don’t hurt yourself.”  
  
“Go back to sleep. I’m not.”  
  
“But I don’t—”  
  
“Shut up,” Sebastian interrupts, gently cutting right through that sentence. I don’t need this, I don’t deserve this, I fucked up tonight: he knows those voices. He knows them intimately, both Chris’s and his own self-directed version from years past. “You got through it, right? You got it done. And now you’re home. With me. Pretty sure that’s a win.”  
  
“Having you?” Chris blinks fuzzily at him. “Yeah, it—but I don’t. Have you. Oh god, I don’t mean I want to—have you, like, own you, or like—claim you, or—”  
  
Sebastian’s heart does not scream and shatter like broken sunbeams. It knows why not. He’s not what Chris wants. “I got it,” he says calmly. “You don’t need to murder all the synonyms in the English language.”  
  
“That’s not what I…” Chris sighs. “I shouldn’t talk right now.”  
  
“Stay here,” Sebastian suggests, “and watch…um, _Cake Wars_ , why not…with me.”  
  
“Yeah,” Chris says, “yeah, okay,” and falls asleep again almost immediately, worn out.  
  
Sebastian rests his hand on Chris’s shoulder. Feels the warmth of him: steady, present, secure.  
  
He closes his eyes, intending to open them in a minute.  
  
When he wakes up it’s morning, aureate dawnlight streaming in. It’ll be a softly warm sort of day, like cotton candy and boardwalks and sunshine through a breeze. His wrist aches, but not badly; the wrapping has helped.  
  
When he wakes up Chris Evans is sitting on the sofa next to him, wearing sweatpants and a simple blue t-shirt, eating spaghetti bolognese out of Tupperware for breakfast. Chris Evans is watching him. With an expression he can’t read.  
  
“Huh,” Sebastian manages, yawning. “Where’s mine?”  
  
Chris abruptly looks far too guilty for a simple question about pasta. “I thought this was for me?”  
  
“It is, I just wasn’t awake yet and I am always in favor of Italian for breakfast.” He stops. Thinks about this. Why not, why not. “Italian sausage. In the morning.”  
  
Chris chokes on a bite of spaghetti. Ah. Triumph.  
  
“Wow,” Chris says, putting the fork down. “I mean, wow. You went there.”  
  
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. Not awake, I said.” Best innocent expression. Big eyes.  
  
“Not gonna work on me, kid. Not when I know the jokes you can make about lube.” Chris raises an eyebrow at him. “Don’t say anything about lube and sausages.”  
  
“That—” Sebastian splutters, gives up: “That’s the worst mental picture _ever_. Thank you for that. Give me back my spaghetti.”  
  
“You made it for me.”  
  
“And now I want it. Share.”  
  
Chris hands him the fork. Sebastian steals two bites in companionable silence; hands it back. “You didn’t wake me up.”  
  
“I fell asleep too, and then…I…sort of…you looked comfortable…how’re you feeling?”  
  
“Oh, this—it’s fine. We can even take this off, I can bend it now.”  
  
“Before today’s interview. Not yet.”  
  
“Um,” Sebastian says, surprised by the firmness in that tone and not at all unwilling, “yes, all right, I—guess I’m leaving it on.”  
  
“Yep.” Chris offers him the fork again. Sebastian waves the hand in question, smiling. “You were right, I made it for you.”  
  
“Yeah, but you—”  
  
“Come on,” Sebastian says, “I need to do laundry, I’m running out of clothes,” and gets up. He doesn’t want to know what that sentence would’ve been. He can’t hear the voice of a friend.  
  
Chris doesn’t follow immediately, but comes in as he’s sorting out shirts, and promptly takes the shirts away. “Don’t do things. You’re hurt.”  
  
Sebastian raises an eyebrow at him. “I’m out of clothing.”  
  
“I can do your laundry.”  
  
“I get Chris Evans doing my domestic chores?—no, I’m not subjecting you to my socks.” Or his lacy blue panties, or the emerald satin pair with the matching garters, though he’s left those at home. He does like color. Sensation. The way they look and feel, cupping his cock, caressing his skin. Tiny scraps of decadence that he’s allowed to have, to savor.  
  
“Sebastian,” Chris says, and the wistfulness in that beloved voice confuses him. “Don’t. You can—you can wear my stuff. We’re close enough these days, it’ll fit. And…”  
  
“And?”  
  
“I would. Do your laundry. Do your chores.” Chris reaches out, catches his injured arm. Stands there looking at it, holding Sebastian’s elbow, not touching his wrist. “I don’t know if—god, I don’t know. I don’t want to say this but I can’t not’ve said it. I _can’t_.”  
  
Sebastian’s stomach plummets to his feet. Gravity wobbles. “You want me to leave—that’s fine, I can, I’ll go to a hotel—” He doesn’t know what he’s done. Maybe Chris thinks they’ve gotten too close, sleeping entwined. Maybe Chris doesn't know how to let him down gently. Maybe Chris has seen the panties.  
  
Chris’s hand tightens around his elbow. Chris’s eyes get huge. “No!”  
  
“Then…I don’t…I think I don’t understand.” His unwashed laundry watches from its heap on the guest bed. Because you are a guest, it reminds him.  
  
“No,” Chris repeats, determined, defeated. “Though I guess if you don’t know what I want to—if you’re not even thinking—but fuck it. I said I can’t not say it. I have to. When I got back and you were hurt—you were on the floor and I thought—”  
  
“I’m fine!”  
  
“I know. I know you are.” Chris steps closer. Lifts his other hand; hesitates. The hand hovers in the space between them: not quite contact, but close. So close. “If you weren’t, though—and, fuck, I tried so hard, I tried to just be your friend, if that was all you wanted, but seeing you hurt—I don’t want to never have said this. How I feel.”  
  
“How you— _what?”_  
  
“I love you,” Chris whispers, holding his arm as if he’s made of glass, holding his arm in the guest bedroom on a California morning. “I love you, Sebastian. I know—I know you don’t, you aren’t even thinking—I don’t expect anything and nothing’s gonna change, I can behave, I swear, I’m—”  
  
Sebastian throws himself across the space between them and into Chris’s arms. Presses lips together: clumsy, breathless, panting with need.  
  
“—oh fuck,” Chris says against his mouth, astonished; and then is kissing him back, wild and wondering and hot.  The beard’s softly scratchy and the kiss tastes like spaghetti and surprise, and Chris nips lightly at his lower lip and then licks the sting away, licks into his mouth, gives him more.  
  
Sebastian tries to cling to Chris. To touch Chris everyplace: this is real, this is happening, and he wants so much, he wants to feel Chris against him and atop him and inside him, because yes, yes—  
  
Chris stops kissing him. Leans back just enough—not letting go—to look him in the eye. The morning’s ordinary and extraordinary. Los Angeles sunshine. Chris’s house. They have an interview in three hours. Sebastian’s heart’s pounding.  
  
“Sebastian…” Chris murmurs his name as if tasting the heart of the universe, radiant and awestruck. “You…well, I guess maybe some things’re gonna change…if you want…”  
  
“I do,” Sebastian breathes, “I want, I’ve been wanting—you said you love me and I—”  
  
“Don’t say it just because I did.” Chris’s gaze kindles with concern. “You don’t have to.”  
  
“You’re the person I want to come home to,” Sebastian interrupts, “you feel like home, and I want to—to give you backrubs when you’re tense, and make spaghetti for you, and also kiss you a whole fucking lot, everywhere, so, yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m not saying it because I feel like I have to, I’m saying that I love you,” and Chris laughs and sniffles because Chris gets emotional at big heartfelt moments, and then kisses him swift and sweet.  
  
Sometime in the next enjoyable minutes they topple onto the bed, hands and bodies moving together; Chris shoves Sebastian’s laundry to the floor and rolls them over, landing atop him, between legs that willingly part. Chris balances there and grins: playful, teasing, but with more bashful emotion hiding underneath. “You do…um, you like this, right? You like…you said in that one interview you liked me being stronger…except you can probably take me, these days…”  
  
“I was thinking more along the lines of you taking me.” He bats silly hopeful eyes at Chris. At his Chris: poised over him, smiling. Chris wants him. He can feel it. Oh, he can _feel_ it. “Or we can switch. Both. Either. Everything. Everything’s good.”  
  
“Everything,” Chris agrees, bending to kiss him. One hand tugs down Sebastian’s Black Widow-patterned pajama pants, the ones he fell asleep in and is still wearing. “You—huh.”  
  
“Oh. _Oh_ —um, I can explain—well, no, I can’t—I just like them—I like the color, and the way they feel—” He glares. This is difficult with that hand where it is. Chris keeps him pinned to the bed, seemingly mesmerized by scarlet clinging fabric. “Sometimes I like things. I like you. And I like knowing I’ve got something pretty on underneath, just for me. They weren’t for you.”  
  
“They weren’t?”  
  
“What, you thought I was _expecting_ this? No!”  
  
“But you like them.” Chris tugs the pajama pants all the way off, rests a hand over Sebastian’s hip, slips a finger under elastic. Sebastian’s breath catches; his next words vanish. Chris goes on, “Not sayin’ I’m not surprised, but I like these too. On you. They look…I want to touch you. To get my mouth on you. Maybe make you come in them. Is that a thing? Can I do that?”  
  
“Oh fuck yes,” Sebastian says shakily. “But when you wreck them you’re buying me more.”  
  
Chris’s eyes get dark. Smoldering. “Yeah. I can do that. You wearin’ little silky panties I bought for you, under a suit, on the red carpet…”  
  
“Yes. God yes.”  
  
Chris wraps a hand around him. Strokes. Rocks weight against him. They’re both painfully hard; he can feel Chris’s arousal echoed in his bones. He shivers, arches hips into the pressure of that hand. “Tell me more.”  
  
“More…” Chris bites a lip, conspiratorial, thinking. “Got a favorite pair?”  
  
“I… _oh_ …I like red…but the emerald ones have matching—oh fuck do that again—garters—and I bought a tie the same color…”  
  
Chris laughs, groans, keeps working his cock through silky fabric. The fabric’s growing wet; Sebastian whimpers. Chris frees his own cock from sweatpants, lets it press between them. Sebastian tries to get a hand there; Chris grabs his hands, pins them to the mattress. “You never told me about this. You get to wait. Behave.”  
  
Sebastian’s higher brain functions shut off. White-hot splendor flashes down his spine, through his body. Those words, that voice, that weight holding him down and toying with his cock—  
  
“Still good?” Chris’s gaze sweeps over him assessingly. Sebastian nods. Desperate and frantic. Cock dripping and slick.  
  
“Good,” Chris goes on, and laughs again, almost to himself. “You and the panties…I mean, wearing a tie the same color, fuck, everyone thinks you’re so innocent…and all the time you’re walking around that way, knowing you’re doing that in public, gettin’ off on it, and no one else knows…but good anyway. Because you want to be. For me. You’d wear whatever I bought you, and you'd love it.”  
  
Sebastian moans. He’s dissolving into need and sensation and the ache between his legs and the relentless stroking of that hand. Chris, watching his face, whispers, “Oh, fuck, Seb—” and tenses, and Sebastian realizes Chris is on the brink of coming just from this: cock rutting against his hip, muscles taut.  
  
He sobs, “Please—” and pushes hips upward, and Chris pants, “Yeah, come on, show me, come in those pretty red panties—” and then groans—  
  
They come simultaneously and sticky and shuddering, sprawled across the bed, mostly dressed and astounded and overjoyed. Chris bumps their noses together trying to kiss him; Sebastian, sundrenched and weightless and giddy, starts laughing. His panties’re thoroughly soaked and slick and happy, and Chris’s hand rubs his cock through them one more time.  
  
“Fuck,” Chris says finally, through the kissing and the ticklish relived giggling and the quivering aftermath. “That was…moving pretty fast. You…I mean…”  
  
“It wasn’t,” Sebastian corrects, looping a leg around his waist. Mentally vows eternal gratitude to gymnastics movies for flexibility. “Not when I’ve been wanting you for years. When you’ve been…you said…wanting me as well. It’s about time, really.”  
  
“Time…” Chris laughs more, nuzzles his collarbone—Sebastian purrs contentedly—and leaves a pink smudge of beard-burn. “Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We’re gonna have to get dressed. Shower. Interview.”  
  
And nothing’s going to change, Sebastian thinks, except for this: loving and being loved, out in the open between them. They’re still themselves; they love each other. Laundry on the floor and long days of filming and late-night character-motivation debates. They can have it all. They _can_. “I…may not have any clothes. I never did laundry.”  
  
Chris sits up. Touches his bandaged wrist. “How’re you?”  
  
“Perfect,” Sebastian says, “I’m perfect.” He is. His body’s singing.  
  
“ _Yeah_ you are.” Chris tips that head, endearing, boyish, excited. “I’ve got an idea.”  
  
Which is how Sebastian ends up walking into an interview dressed in Chris Evans’ softest coziest long-sleeved shirt and Chris’s slim-fit stylish pants, topped off by Chris’s current favorite blue jacket because Chris worries about him being cold; he’s wearing something else too, his own but picked out by Chris.   
  
This pair’s blue. With little bows. Matching the jacket.   
  
He’s head to toe wrapped up in Chris, Chris’s clothes and Chris’s command, and when their eyes meet they both grin and have to look away. This is new; someday maybe they'll tell everyone, confirm rumors, shout from rooftops, but for now it’s newborn and secret and intimate and _theirs_. Not for sharing, not yet. Sacred and bright and rare.  
  
Sebastian smiles to himself, and thinks about Chris ruining his delicate sapphire-blue panties back at home later, maybe while he’s dressed in _just_ Chris’s shirt and the aforementioned panties, maybe they’re getting pulled down just enough; and he blushes a bit and squirms a bit and pretends to’ve been listening to a question, and when he glances over again Chris is smiling too.


End file.
